Buy and hold, hopefully forever…
PZ Cussons is in many respects a mini-Unilever. It owns and manages a range of brands that incorporate personal care, home care, food, and beauty products. Weighing in with a market cap of only £1.5 billion, it is no more than a fly in the ointment for Unilever, but what it lacks in scale it can make […]
These super investors tend to be a cold-blooded lot, but there is one company that does seem to get their pulses racing: Valeant Pharmaceuticals. I have to be honest, I had not even heard of this company until very recently but it seems to have become a gorilla overnight and so I thought I would […]
Everybody knows that the market has done well since the shenanigans of 2008, but the stock market is not itself a business–it simply aggregates the valuations of many different businesses. These businesses fire and splutter at different times, just as they drift in and out of fashion on one whim or another. So, although many companies may be fully […]
There was an an interesting post by Total Return Investor a few months ago in which he had a go at cloning Neil Woodford’s portfolio with US-based companies. That started me thinking about whether British investors could do something similar to create their own mini-Berkshire Hathaway. Obviously valuation is always key when buying shares and I am not suggesting that […]
This weekend it is the turn of John Authers–a key member of the FT’s resident brains trust–to nail his colours to the mast regarding market valuation. He believes that it is overvalued but that the timing of when this will be rectified is as unknowable as ever, i.e. this is not necessarily a market top. I […]
A value trap is defined by Investopedia as follows: A stock that appears to be cheap because the stock has been trading at low multiples of earnings, cash flow or book value for an extended time period. Stock traps attract investors who are looking for a bargain because these stocks are inexpensive. The trap springs […]
Waitress: Would you like a drink with that? FI: Yes please, can I have a Coke? Waitress: I’m sorry Sir, but I’m afraid we only have Pepsi. FI: Oh OK then, I’ll take a Pepsi. When I think of Pepsi I think of No. 2, Michael Jackson, and the Pepsi Challenge. One of those is […]
Treating myself to a well-earned day off work yesterday, I decided to take the opportunity to attend my first corporate Annual General Meeting. Nominee Accounts Up to this point I had never been entirely confident that I could do this, because I hold my shares electronically through a nominee account. The benefits of this are that it both makes “trading” cheaper […]
I have just read William N. Thorndike’s brilliant The Outsiders, which identifies the traits and techniques of the CEOs that ran (or run) some of the best-managed companies of the last fifty years. A few of these names I had heard of (Buffett, John Malone, and Katharine Graham), and some I hadn’t (Bill Anders, Bill Stiritz, […]
Shares in Alliance Trust, we are told, are the sort of thing that gets passed down from generation to generation; much like a Patek Philippe or the Grandparents’ silver teaspoon collection. Another thing that gets passed down is complaints about the trust’s performance and the ensuing promises of better to come. So, what has been the problem this […]